Traveling on a Budget

I think that topic title Traveling on a Budget is sort of a misnomer. The budget you have for travel is relative. Your budget may be $10 or $10,000. The dollar amount of your budget will not only depend on your finances but also the type of traveling you are doing and the amount of advanced planning time.

For instance, you may literally have no money in your pocket, a bag lunch, and a full tank of gas. I've had this experience several times. I work as a consulting archaeologist. Therefore, often on a moment's notice, I have to do a survey or monitor construction in some little town several hours away. More often than not, this situation happens two days before payday and three days after some major appliance has died and my rainy day fund is completely gone. So I pack some peanut butter sandwiches, grab my gear, take the company truck, and get out onto the road.

Alternately, when I've planned for a vacation, I tend to have a real thought out budget. This budget could be camping weekend with the family sized or once in a lifetime European second honeymoon sized. In this way, my budget many be a few hundred dollars or several thousand dollars. Consequently, the amount of your budget will vary substantially with the type of traveling you will be doing and how much time you have to plan your trip. Thus, it is impossible to focus on a traveling for a specific budget of say $500 or $50.

Instead, I think the actual budget amount is less important than trying to get the most out of the money you have, while suiting your needs. Essentially, how can you make the most of any travel experience?

Even in my example of my no money, peanut butter sandwich, full tank of gas scenario, I try to make the most of my trip. On one such trip, I was a little early for my construction meeting so I stopped at a roadside museum. The museum was set up as a free rest stop picnic area, so I looked around, walked through the buildings, and read the signs without costing me a cent.

On another trip, the construction crew was drilling through solid rock. This is a horribly slow process taking several hours per meter. Furthermore, artifacts are not found in solid rock so I really didn't need to be monitoring every second of the construction. I took a little reconnaissance trip ahead of the construction through the most beautiful forest, scouting for potential archaeological sites of course. Then at lunch, I sat on a rock overlooking a green mountain lake and I ate my peanut butter sandwiches. These activities didn't cost me anything and my boss was thrilled that I took initiative.
A few more dollars in my pocket, I might have ate at the restaurant in town that the construction workers were raving about or stopped into the cute little gift shop. If I would have had to stay overnight, it might have been nice to do a little rock climbing or hiking on the trails set out near one of the campsites. Or maybe I would have stayed at the hotel with the hot tubs and caught that play from the local theater company.